Successful technologies today seldom come about due to a grand “Eureka” event. Rather, they come from lots of people all having little Eurekas and little “damn, I was sure that would work” moments. -Clark Lindsey

Category Archives: Launchers

Congratulations to SpaceX who landed the first stage intact. Assuming cost is roughly related to stage mass and engine count, reusing the first stage saves 9/10 of the whole rocket cost. If they can run the stage ten times, that … Continue reading →

There’s two fundamental approaches to lower space launch cost: K-strategy: Building sophisticated reusable rockets that can fly quickly again after landing. r-strategy: Instead building simple expendable rockets by the mass as cheaply as possible. Firefly, looks to do just the … Continue reading →

A fascinating BOAC (British government airline) advertisement film from the fifties. Tomorrow was not theirs, but that of plastics, the jet engine and the transistor, which made almost all of these jobs obsolete. The British mindset of bringing luxurious services … Continue reading →

Well, I thought maybe I could add some content. Everybody’s heard about the British Hotol follower Skylon and its airbreathing SABRE engines. What’s special about them? My understandin’s based on this excellent document from Reaction Engines explaining why the system … Continue reading →

Or The Space Game, by ESA. This is a nice javascript webpage where a probe is shot from Earth to Jupiter with gravity assists at Venus (twice), Earth and Mars. You try to achieve the lowest propulsive delta vee. You … Continue reading →

Well, scaling seems to be my pet issue. I recently wrote something not entirely well reasoned in a comment at Paul Breed’s. (For some reason Chrome complains about blogrolling.com malware there so continue if you’re sure you’re safe.) So let’s … Continue reading →

All these people had to get paid. Even when there wasn’t a launch. Well, to be exact: until the money was spent and there weren’t gonna be any more launches, which was a few years from this photo. From the … Continue reading →

At the Science and Society picture library. Note the many small independently hinging peroxide/kerosene Gamma chambers, the large but cancelled Larch engine, the washing machine / musical box guidance computer with a rotary drum that has bumps, and many other … Continue reading →